After the 2013 election, the center-right Conservatives and the anti-immigration Progress Party formed a minority government, with support from the Liberals and Christian Democrats. This government has survived the full parliamentary cycle, but polling since 2013 has shown considerable fluctuation in voter support (see Figure 1).

Is the rise of the Center Party just another European backlash against immigration? Not exactly.

This campaign is more about the center-periphery cleavage in Norwegian politics. The current government made a number of centralizing changes a top priority, aiming to reduce the number of municipalities, some of which include just a few hundred citizens. Local referendums were held to determine which municipalities to merge. When the results did not support the plan, the government threatened to force these mergers.

In a country in which many consider Oslo to be interfering, naive and arrogant, such actions were a godsend to the Center Party, the only one with full ownership of the periphery end of the center-periphery divide. The party promised to take up the fight of the people against distant decision-making — and the current government.

The Center Party’s recent success is a reminder that a populist line — pitting the “corrupt elite” against the “pure people” — is not reserved for anti-immigration or right-wing parties. Indeed, the Center remains more likely to join a Labor-led government than a Conservative coalition.

2) Labor has won every election since 1927. Can the Conservatives break that run? After 2013, the price of oil, pivotal to the Norwegian economy, fell by 70 percent before partially recovering. The governing coalition responded with tax cuts, an expansive fiscal policy, investment in infrastructure and, for the first time in the country’s history, withdrawing more than it deposited into the sovereign wealth fund, Norway’s massive financial reserve built on oil revenue. The opposition Labor Party scolded Prime Minister Erna Solberg for this latter decision, and blamed the government for rising unemployment rates.

3) Right-wing populists are feeling the effects of a term in government. When the populist right-wing Progress Party entered government for the first time in 2013, its members had good reasons to be pessimistic. Not only had the party seen declining poll numbers since 2009, but commentators assumed that the party would be forced to moderate once in power and lose its base — or prove itself incapable of responsible administration. By and large, neither prediction came to pass.

Either the Labor or Conservative leader will be Norway’s next prime minister, but how the governing coalition shakes out is more uncertain than ever. With the two largest parties both weaker than in 2013, some seats probably will shift to a slew of minor parties hoping to break the 4 percent electoral threshold and play kingmaker in coalition negotiations.

All minor parties will be keenly aware that after negotiations, their power tends to wane along with their poll ratings, as happened to the Socialist Left and Center after 2005. But after dirtying its sheets with the boisterous Progress Party, the Conservatives may find it harder than before to form a coalition. Moreover, should the Center Party do well in Monday’s election, then Labor will have its own populist party with which to do business.

The big question is how much genuine ground the Conservatives have made up against Labor during the campaign.